If there is one thing that we’ve learned since the 2016 election, it’s that the deep state is not some myth. It’s real. It’s working against this administration. And William Barr is doing his best tom uncover their activities during the 2016 election. US Attorney John Durham has been spearheading an investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion myth and how it became such cancer within the halls of the Obama DOJ. While Barack Obama and Joe Biden might escape charges, this is now a full-blown criminal investigation.
The Trump-Russia fiasco was probably one of the worst journalistic catastrophes—ever. It was grounded in the Trump dossier, compiled by ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele, funded by the Democrats, and was pretty much virtually unverified. All of it. It was used to set off the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into collusion and was cited as credible evidence to secure a spy warrant against Carter Page, a former Trump campaign official. Part of this was the Crossfire Hurricane operation, which essentially spied on the Trump team during the 2016 election. The DOJ of a Democratic president was weaponized to spy on the opposing presidential campaign of the rival party. And Obama had no problems with this, as The Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel noted, Barry is an advocate for “politicized justice.” It’s how this clown show totally went off the rails.
In the counterintelligence probe, incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was targeted, despite zero evidence that he should be part of this probe or any federal investigation. Flynn made a phone call to the Russians which was routine. The FBI weaponized the phone call and used it as the basis for this Logan Act nonsense that eventually ensnared Flynn in a perjury trap. This was planned by James Comey and his associates. It’s all in the DOJ motion to dismiss the bogus “lying to the FBI” charges, where a long history of FBI overreach and prosecutorial misconduct is detailed. Comey had nothing on Flynn but needed a scalp at all costs. The agents who interviewed him even noted that they felt Flynn didn’t lie, but onward went the witch hunt against the former general. The FBI closed their investigation of Flynn, but Special Counsel Robert Mueller rehashed it, put the screw to Flynn, threatened him with financial ruin, and his family, specifically a criminal charge against his son, that eventually led to this shoddy plea deal. Hey, the Special Counsel’s Office, which took over the FBI probe, allegedly leaked a fake news story to CNN about Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chief, being under a FISA warrant. He wasn’t, but the judge in the case forced Manafort’s lawyer to testify against him over the allegations that he could be a foreign agent. It was done to see if there was any collusion evidence on Trump. There wasn’t, but the SCO seems to have found a clever way to shred attorney-client privilege in order to find this unicorn—the smoking gun in this circus act.
It took the Mueller report and the DOJ Inspector General report on FISA abuses and Crossfire Hurricane to debunk the dossier, a piece of political opposition research, but the damage was done, especially to Page, Flynn, and Manafort.
April 2017:
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 20, 2020
"[Trump] and the people around him may have been caught up in surveillance of foreign individuals and their identities may have been disclosed. Do you know anything about this?"
Susan Rice: "I know nothing about this." pic.twitter.com/ajkvGMfG3b
On top of the spying, several top Obama officials were making unmasking requests, especially against Flynn. In NSA intercepts, Americans’ names are usually redacted, but officials can request their identified be revealed. In this case, the Obama White House has created controversy since all of their unmasking requests center on their political rivals. Susan Rice and Samantha Power are some of the former top Obama officials who lied about their involvement in this aspect. Power testified before Congress in 2017 that she never sought to unmask records, well she did—several times. Rice pretty much played dumb as well, saying she didn’t know unmasking was going on, but her email to herself showed that she knew Flynn was more or less a target of the Obama White House. Oh, also she did it herself to other top Trump officials. What is going on here? Well, Obama's top folks are lying about unmasking. Is this part of the Durham investigation? Yes, but AG Barr decided to tap another US attorney to specifically look into this area to ensure nothing fell through the crack. We have a new legal front (via Fox News):
Attorney General Bill Barr has asked U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas John Bash to review the practice of "unmasking" before and after the 2016 presidential election, a controversy that has picked up steam after the Justice Department moved to drop charges against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, the DOJ told Fox News on Wednesday night.
Republican lawmakers have demanded more information about the extent of the practice after a previously clandestine list of Obama-era officials who sought to reveal what turned out to be the identity of Michael Flynn in intelligence reports was released earlier the month. The DOJ had moved to drop the Flynn case after internal memos were released raising serious questions about the nature of the investigation that led to his late-2017 guilty plea for lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts.
DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec told Fox News' "Hannity" that U.S. Attorney John Durham, who has been reviewing the origins of the Russia investigation, was looking into "unmasking" but Barr determined certain aspects of the practice needed further review, and Bash has been assigned to do so.
Unmasking inherently isn't wrong, but certainly, the frequency, the motivation and the reasoning behind unmasking can be problematic, and when you're looking at unmasking as part of a broader investigation -- like John Durham's investigation -- looking specifically at who was unmasking whom, can add a lot to our understanding about motivation and big picture events," Kupec said.
And the FBI is also reviewing the Flynn case as well. The hunters have become the hunted and the usual suspects should be placed under the microscope—James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, John Brennan, Rod Rosenstein, and Robert Mueller. Also, add the entire investigation, which knew the Flynn allegations were probably nonsense but kept taking the nation for a ride on this mythical Russian collusion trip. Why? We shall find out soon enough.
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